


The Centre Cannot Hold

by meggannn



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh!
Genre: Angst, Drama, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-30
Updated: 2010-12-30
Packaged: 2017-10-22 15:45:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/239704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meggannn/pseuds/meggannn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The end is coming, and the spirits prepare as best they know how.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Centre Cannot Hold

_i._  
do i dare  
disturb the universe?

The click-click-click of cards shuffling, a Duel Disk humming, screams from the shadows. The ones he couldn't save.

Yami jerks awake, coming to in his soul room. The maze has shifted. It has expanded – it's bigger, so much bigger, and there are so many more mazes and doors and stairs that he sinks to the ground, allowing himself a moment of weakness, because it's not fair, it's  _so_  not fair, and hasn't he tried his best? Hasn't he given it all he had, hasn't he done enough?

He loves his new life. He loves his games. He loves his friends. He loves his partner. Why does the Puzzle torment him with nightmares, send him visions of screaming souls that were beyond his power to help?

But the power of the Items doesn't work that way, and neither do the gods. How could he stray from Destiny when it has him chained by the wrists and ankles? What other choice does he have?

Yami wishes he had the gall to damn Fate, damn it to hell, but it's all he can do just to curl up against the wall and stop thinking about it, just stop _being_ , because he's tired, so tired, and he wants it to end. He wants to tell Yugi everything, but he shouldn't, he wouldn't, and so his partner sleeps on, unaware and silent.

He tells himself he would cry if he could.

 _ii.  
herr god, herr lucifer_  
_beware_  
_beware._

He fiddles with shadows on clear nights, in alleyways, in rank little pubs that reek of cigarettes and liquor. He offers what he has, and finds the time to even pity his host, between it all. Ryou knows nothing.

Bakura gives everything to the Shadows, lets the monsters feast and rip his soul to pieces and put him back together again. He knows what they want, and he sacrifices it all, relishing in the raw, unholy power that they give in return.

 _iii.  
our two souls therefore, which are one,_  
_though i must go, endure not yet_  
_a breach, but an expansion,_  
_like gold to airy thinness beat_

Yami knows, and he wonders if Yugi knows. He's rotting in the Puzzle, wasting away as Yugi grows stronger in himself.

It's almost over. It's either him or Yugi; one of them will have to go. He could never be selfish enough to give up Yugi, and he knows that he would never let Yugi sacrifice himself – not again – so he knows what will happen. All he wonders is how.

He wants to yell, to throw things, to lose control for just a minute, an hour. He wasn't made to sit idle and wait for things to happen on their own time. He refuses to play hide-and-go-seek as the world crumbles. _  
_

He would gladly give his soul for them all, but not like this.

 _iv.  
because i could not stop for death,_  
_he kindly stopped for me_

Bakura is here to witness. Until the pharaoh acts, until the gods change their minds, it's all he can do to just sit and watch the whole ordeal pan out. Watch the Shadows and give more, more, and take in return what he knows is not his.

The Shadows have come for the night. Bakura takes over Ryou's body gently, so as not to arouse suspicion (he doesn't know where his host got the notion that he was ever terribly  _cruel_  to their body, really, he cared for it as he would his own) and pushes the other's mind into bottomless sleep. Ryou's dreams are plagued with him, the white-haired human monster with sharp teeth and a deathly ring and the strength of every gruesome, terrible power that had ever walked the earth.

Bakura knows how much Ryou fears him, loathes him; wants him to stop, wants him out, but still simply  _wants_  him. He doesn't try to stop him.

The Shadows feast.

 _v.  
this is the way the world ends_  
_not with a bang but a whimper_

But he still wants to know why. He waits for the answer, from the Puzzle, the Shadows, from the gods.

He wants to interpret the language of the Puzzle, translate it into a voice or a meaning he can understand. The gods haven't abandoned him, he tells himself, and they are there. Even if he can't see them, can't hear, can't tell.

Yami knows the end is fast approaching – the apocalypse, the second coming, the Shadows' victory or their improbable defeat – but when it happens, at least Yugi will last beyond it. That's what matters in the end, and he'll take that with him, walk through the door, stamp his mark on it and declare it his. It's not much and it's certainly not enough, but it's all he has, and it'll have to be remembered this time, a last look at what the great pharaoh could have been, bare and brilliant and gone.

 _vi.  
and what rough beast, its hour come round at last,_  
_slouches towards bethlehem to be born?_

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T.S. Eliot  
> 2\. "Lady Lazarus" by Sylvia Plath  
> 3\. "A Valediction: Forbidden Mourning" by John Donne  
> 4\. "Because I Could Not Stop for Death" by Emily Dickenson  
> 5\. "The Hollow Men" by T.S. Eliot  
> 6\. "The Second Coming" by William Butler Yeats


End file.
